I have never been a natural at following satnav instructions, and my journey to Tossens in Lower Saxony proved this beyond all doubt. Somewhere between Bremen and the North Sea coast, I managed to turn a straightforward two-hour drive into a three-and-a-half-hour scenic tour of every muddy farm track in rural Germany. The low point came when I confidently reversed into what I thought was the property driveway, only to discover I had parked in the local postman's garden. He was terribly polite about it, in that way Germans have of making you feel worse through sheer reasonableness, and I spent a good five minutes trying to explain in broken German that I was not, in fact, casing his property for a burglary.

By the time I actually found the right place, a tidy holiday home in a small coastal settlement, I was in that peculiar state of frazzled exhaustion where everything seems either hilarious or mildly catastrophic. The key safe refused to open for a solid ten minutes. I stood there in the drizzle, jabbing numbers with increasing desperation, convinced I had somehow travelled to the wrong country entirely. Then I realised I had been entering the booking reference instead of the actual code. A small victory, but by that point I felt I deserved a medal.

Stepping inside for the first time was like exhaling after holding your breath for hours. The place smelled of clean linen and that faint, pleasant woodiness you get in coastal properties. I dumped my bags with theatrical exhaustion and immediately went to investigate the important things: kettle location, biscuit situation, and whether the sofa required a running jump or a dignified lower. The sofa, I discovered, was deceptively deep. I sank into it with a sort of involuntary oof and spent a moment staring at the ceiling, contemplating my life choices. There is something about arriving alone at a holiday let that forces a particular kind of honesty. No one to perform competence for. Just you, your questionable navigation skills, and the quiet realisation that you have packed seventeen books and approximately three usable pairs of trousers.

I eventually hauled myself up to explore properly. The place was simple but decent, with that practical German approach to furnishing where everything has a purpose and nothing is trying too hard to impress. The kitchen window looked out towards the Wadden Sea mudflats, that extraordinary stretch of coastline where the sea simply retreats twice daily and leaves the world looking slightly unfinished. I had forgotten how strange and compelling that landscape is. Flat, grey, apparently empty, yet absolutely teeming with life if you know how to look. Standing there with my restorative cup of tea, still wearing one shoe because the other had somehow vanished in the unpacking chaos, I felt the particular satisfaction of having finally arrived somewhere that does not demand very much of you.

The mishaps of the journey had already started to feel like necessary preamble, the price of admission for the particular peace that follows. I found my missing shoe in the bathroom, made a second cup of tea, and sat properly on that deceptive sofa as the afternoon light did its watery best against the coastal sky. Not a bad start, all considered, though I made a mental note to apologise to the postman if our paths crossed again. Some first impressions you simply have to live with.